sitepoint.com Archives - 31 March 2015, Tuesday

When I first learned about the Meteor JavaScript framework, I saw someone write, “Meteor is to Node.js as Rails is to Ruby,” and I think that’s a good comparison. A few years ago, Rails was the hot new thing on the web, sprinkling some useful “magic” through the development process to...

Torquebox is on the cusp of a 4.0 release that is a major update. Torquebox will be broken into many gems, and will function like other Ruby web servers. Torquebox is an excellent option for production Ruby apps, and 4.0 should make it even easier to use. A new Ruby webserver interfac...

Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Litecoin and Dogecoin have been one of the most controversial topics in recent times. However, despite being popular in the media, few professionals fully understand the mechanics of these systems. Fortunately, when viewed at a high level, the concept...

There used to be a time when installing Ruby and the associated Ruby on Rails web framework was a complete pain. Since then, all sorts of solutions have sprung up to make this process a little bit less painful and tedious. One of the latest is called Tokaido and makes the installation...

HTML5 introduced an API to work with Server-Sent Events . The main idea behind SSE is simple: the web page subscribes to an event source on the web server that streams updates. The web page does not have to constantly poll the server to check for updates (as we’ve done with AJAX polli...

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There is an exception to the rule that every Rails.vim command begins with the letter :R , which is gf (short for Go to File). The default behavior of Vim when typing gf with the cursor on a file name is to open up that file. However, when using Rails.vim this behavior is modified, so...

Typically when you set out with a Rails application, your data lives inside a MySQL (or PostgreSQL, or SQLite, or Oracle) database. But, it turns out that the traditional relational database is not a great fit for all types of data. For example, if you want very fast access to data th...

Have you ever thought about selling your services in exchange for Bitcoins? It’s not so strange – today, many big players are actually doing it. From OkCupid to KhanAcademy, even WordPress is accepting Bitcoin. Also, some countries are thinking about it as a currency . Today, we will ...

In the previous parts of this series, we covered a social gems such as LinkedIn and Facebook, creating a simple application that covers the authentication and APIs queries. We are going to build a similar application with the Octokit gem for the same purposes.

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The Ruby language is 21 years old. Its strong community and adoption by the open source community has kept this language steady and improving. Ruby has changed drastically over the years. It has grown from a young child to the strong adult that it is today. But it didn’t get that way ...

One way to solve the problem is to split a Rails app into various pieces that work together in a Service Orientated Architecture (SOA). By leaving the web-request and data-layer functionality to the Rails application and moving the more complex, less CRUD code into separate services, ...

To demonstrate using the API, we will implement a simple “app” using Trello as the user interface. Imagine as an organization you want to keep an eye on how people talk about you on Twitter. As a first step, you want to simply count the number of positive, negative, and neutral tweets...

Ruby on Rails is the web development framework of the moment, powering Gitub, Twitter, Hulu and many more successful apps and websites. The arrival of Rails 4 is the perfect time to learn it. SitePoint’s newest ebook, ‘Jump Start Rails’ , from Andy Hawthorne, will get you up to speed ...

Amazingly, Chrome usage grew by a further 1.5% in July — one of the largest monthly increases it’s ever experienced. Google is rapidly catching Mozilla and Chrome 12 overtook Firefox 4/5 again to become the world’s second most-used browser. That said, the rapid update schedules confus...

Recently, a freelancing friend of mine found himself out of work. He’d been working on contract with one major client, and that contract was cut off. When I spoke to him, he wasn’t sure where to look for work. He’d spent months out of work, trying online freelance marketplaces, and ma...

When we think about commercial brands, we tend to think of a name, logo, or slogan … anything that is used to identify and distinguish a specific product, service, or business. But on a more basic level, a brand is an identification mark … like when a rancher or farmer uses a branding...

The tool is crammed with amazing features. I try to keep up with developments but it’s easy to miss gems such as examining CSS :active and :hover states . Firebug 1.8 has just been released and it should automagically update in your browser. Alternatively, head over to getfirebug.com ...

Episode 123 of The SitePoint Podcast is now available! This week our regular interview host Louis Simoneau (@rssaddict ) is back with a great interview of 2 guests from the world of ASP.NET Tim Posey an active ASP.NET developer, and Pranav Rastogi @rustd from the ASP.NET team at Micro...

On his site, The Oatmeal , designer Matthew Inman has created a comic strip /*slash*/ poster entitled, How A Web Design Goes Straight To Hell . In this hilarious and all-too-true scenario, the client continues to make more and more horrific changes to the design. Under each subsequent...

This will please many web developers. A recent survey by AptiQuant, a psychometric consulting company based in Canada, has concluded that Internet Explorer users have a lower Intelligence Quotient than users of other browsers. Those with IE6 scored little over 80. Firefox, Chrome and ...

Google has announced their new Page Speed Service . In essence, it’s a combination of proxy servers, Content Delivery Networks (CDN), and web page optimizers which Google states will produce speed gains of 25-60% for most websites . The service is being offered to a limited set of web...

You’ve worked on your elevator pitch, you have a polished website, and a handful of happy clients. You know how to generate new business, but something seems to be holding you back. Here are six very simple ‘small thing’ tips that can often make you leap from average to excellent in y...

It’s easy to show lists of posts in WordPress. Your theme’s index.php file is probably handling all your categories, authors and search requests. However, sometimes you need a little more control. Perhaps you have multiple product pages but only want to feature two or three on your ho...

Everyone has at least one thing they learned to do the wrong way. Anything from spelling a word to playing a sport, or perhaps even driving! Yet, even after discovering the right way of doing it, most people still continue with their bad old habits. And this is no surprise … Learning ...

If you’re reading this blog post because you’re trying to avoid doing something you don’t enjoy, I have a suggestion for you. Stop. If you’re not enjoying the task you’re on, do something else. Stop?! But I’ll never get anything done! The employee mindset tells us we must do the ugly ...

Hands up all those using Firebug . Of course you are. It’d be madness not to. Despite using Firebug almost every day for 5 years, I’m still finding new features and widgets. Here’s one you may have missed… When inspecting links, Firebug shows the default CSS state, i.e. styles applied...

Before I get into the meat of things, I’m happy to announce that I’ve recently had the privilege of co-authoring an exciting new book project published by SitePoint. It’s called HTML5 and CSS3 for the Real World and is scheduled for a late May launch. Naturally, border-radius will be ...

I’ve said many times that Microsoft should do something for XP users – even if that means recommending another browser. Unfortunately, that’s not within their commercial interest and we have a duty to support what people are using. However, I disagree that CCs are necessary. With the ...

So what does this have to do with using your voice more effectively? Well, everything … because the limbic “feeling brain” also processes vocal intonations or “tone of voice.” This means that your tone of voice is the direct link to the “emotional mixing board” in another person’s bra...